The mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto has captivated and frustrated the tech world for years. He or she is reportedly the person who created bitcoin. The mysterious moniker sits atop an infamous 2008 paper about the emerging crytocurrency, but no one knows that person's real identity.

Wired and Gizmodo, however, think they've finally found him. At least, they're pretty sure it's him. He's at least on the radar of Australian authorities, who this morning raided the home of the man, Craig Steven Wright, on an unrelated issue.

The evidence is convincing. Wired and Gizmodo amassed a trove of leaked emails and documents, financial records, and since-deleted blog posts painting a far more complete picture than last year's Newsweek report, which identified California engineer Satoshi "Dorian" Nakamoto as the founder of bitcoin. Nakamoto denied the report and threatened to sue.

Both features on Wright are quite lengthy, but the basic timeline and evidence trail is as follows. In 2008, months before the bitcoin.org paper, Wright's blog mentions his intention to release a "cryptocurrency paper" and references this 2005 paper on triple-entry accounting, an online accounting practice combining double entry bookkeeping with encrypted digital signatures, the use of pseudonyms, and linked data storage transactions similar to bitcoin's block chain structure.

Wired cites blog posts from Wright throughout 2008 and 2009 that include links to a Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) key associated with the Nakamoto pseudonym, and a post timed right around the official launch of bitcoin reading "The Beta of bitcoin is live tomorrow. This is decentralized… We try until it works."

Gizmodo fills in the backstory of Wright's reported partner, the late Dave Kleiman, a computer forensics expert who lived in Palm Beach, Florida. That connection comes mostly through leaked emails and documents from unknown sources sent to and obtained by Wired and Gizmodo. Wright's ties to bitcoin itself, however, are in plain sight.

Wright's LinkedIn page states he's the CEO of alternative currency and banking company DeMorgan Ltd. DeMorgan lists subsidiary companies including a bitcoin wallet company, a bitcoin exchange company, and supercomputing companies related to cryptocurrency. Of more importance, however, are the numbers. Wright owns a reported $60 million in bitcoin invested in one of his cryptocurrency start-ups, verified by corporate advisory firm McGrathNicol's public audit record. But a 1,100,111 bitcoin stash, currently worth around $400 million, is locked in a trust fund between Wright and Kleiman until 2020. The value of that stash matches the value of a stockpile in the bitcoin block chain that's never moved; one widely attributed to Nakamoto.

The leaked emails, which are full of anecdotal evidence of Wright hinting at his identity as Nakamoto, mention an ongoing tax dispute with the Australian authorities. Thus it's not terribly surprising that Australian police raided Wright's home, finding "a substantial computer system set-up." The Australian Federal (AFP) police said in a statement that the raids were not related to the U.S. media's bitcoin claims.

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If the Leaked Documents Fit As Wright hasn't publicly confirmed nor denied the claims yet, and the data leaker(s) remain the Internet equivalent of Deep Throat, the reports have sparked much skepticism online. The Wired and Gizmodo reporters both admit they can't verify the origin of the anonymous tips, leaked emails, transcripts, and financial documents they've received to corroborate much of their reporting.

Still, it's not surprising they published the reports. The compulsion to reveal the secret personas behind Internet legends is human nature. It's part of the lore of the digital age. We saw it with the saga of Ross Ulbricht, a.k.a. Dread Pirate Roberts, the unassuming drug kingpin behind Silk Road. Ulbricht's capture, trial, and imprisonment were a grand and unprecedented dramatic spectacle for the tech world. It spawned a documentary, Deep Web, and a feature film is in the works with Mystic River and Shutter Island author Dennis Lehane writing the script.

If the leaked bitcoin documents turn out to be authentic, the trail doesn't turn out to be an elaborate hoax, and Wright is in fact the founding father of bitcoin, the fanfare around the real Satoshi Nakamoto will likely be far grander than Ulbricht's demise. Place your bets now on who will play "Nakamoto" in the movie version.

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